Wednesday, December 12, 2012

WELL, YOU TRIED, PART II. Ace of Spades, whom we discovered trying to engage the "culture" yesterday, is still at it: He read an interview in the Washington Post with the Pajamas Media nut Roger Simon about Simon's new play, which tells the story of, get this, Walter Duranty. The interview is conducted by Jennifer Rubin, whom Ace normally derides as a RINO wet, but all is forgiven because Ace has his beret on and is trying to look at the arts -- let's see, how did he put it -- "simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics." Which means of course --

[Simon] says it's neither conservative nor liberal, and I believe him, but there is hardly any question that no liberal would explore the question of what happens when a large group of people begin subverting the truth for political purposes. Well, they wouldn't explore this going on in a liberal institution. I'm sure they'd explore it in, say, the conservative movement.

And that's part of the problem right there, isn't? Liberals style themselves truth-tellers and truth-seekers, but as we're seeing yesterday and today, they embargo truths that aren't helpful to the Great Patriotic Cause of Progressivism/Marxism.

-- it's still more argh blargh liberalz blocked mah big hit play.

Ace's attempt to break into the liberal arts by sitting sullenly in the corner of a Modern Drama class and drawing superheroes in his notebook is extremely disappointing to me. I don't know why, but I keep hoping against hope that he'll live up to his putative expectations of himself, and he never does.

I guess I'm just tired of all the rightwing gabble about "culture" being such stupid bullshit. In the Ace post previously treated, he referred to an old Rod Dreher whither-culture bleat that, expectedly, is worse than useless -- Dreher too seems to intuit that if you can't drop politics long enough to actually engage your imagination, you're not going to make any art, but he also seems to believe the acceptable alternative is endless pseudo-philosophical gassing along the lines of "conservatives have names like Lenny and liberals have names like Carl." (And if you are foolish enough to follow Dreher's links, I warn you, you will be punished by Dreher and Will Wilkinson talking about country music. You'll need about a half-hour of Uncle Dave Macon to wash that out of your head.)

I have a theory about why this is all coming up now. These guys recently lost something they'd been living on for years -- the illusion that they are America, all by themselves, with no bleeding-hearts allowed. It's an illusion we liberals learned to give up on long ago, of course. But it may be hard for conservatives to learn that most voters are okay with the man they're convinced is a Maoist Black Power Chicago thug -- or at least that voters like him better than them. In their dejection they wander the streets, and finally enter the libraries and music shops, pick up the books and instruments there, and, peering at them like curious apes, wonder: Maybe pretty thing faggots like am powerful? Maybe if Ace use them him feel good?

62 comments:

Rubin, in the Washington Post: I talked to Simon and Longin about their play (which, unsurprisingly, the mainstream media have ignored)

Gee, it's a yet to be produced play written by the relatively obscure "man who created Moses Wine" and his wife. What does she expect, that a columnist from one of the MSM's premier national newspapers would devote an entire column to an interview with the authors or something?

Marvelous...and yet sad. I think the Right have quite a lot of self-destructiveness left in them that they will expend on this nation and there will be blood as a result. And so much wasted potential as a result.

I sometimes wonder how you would get through to a dimbulb like Rubin about that. I imagine it would be like Total Recall or something.

"But Mrs. Rubin, you are the Mainstream Media!""No! No!""You have a column in the Washington Post! You get paid millions of dollars! You attend parties hosted by Washington insiders!""It's not true! It's not true!"

I take it he's never heard of Noam Chomsky or Glenn Greenwald either, despite their persistence as news makers. Methinks somebody's google is broken from searching "codpiece" + "aircraft carrier" one too many times.

I keep hoping against hope that he'll live up to his putative expectations of himself

Yeah, that's gonna happen. You may as well hope to see Archie Bunker come home from work, settle himself in his chair, and say, "Tonight, Edith, I will not yell at the TV at all. I just want to enjoy my shows like a regular person."

I have yet to see the appeal of McCardle chum Will Wilkinson, who from what I've seen to date is a fairly standard, disingenuous, libertarian, plutocratic shill (but I repeat myself), if better read than most of his ilk. But at least one of the Crooked Timber writers respects him. I dunno – are there some great pieces by the guy (who loved the Ryan budget plan and argues that the rich are overtaxed) that I've missed? (Incidentally, I got out of the boat, and parts of Wilkinson's piece on country music read like an Onion parody. Yikes.)

no liberal would explore the question of what happens when a large group of people begin subverting the truth for political purposes.

That quote gets to the heart of conservative inability to understand the arts. Everyone is defined first by their politics. One is a LIBERAL artist, in that order and scale of magnitude. They can't conceive of an ARTIST who is liberal in his or her daily life.

Are there any great writers who haven't explored what happens when people subvert the truth for their own purposes?

These guys recently lost something they'd been living on for years -- the illusion that they are America

Which they never bothered to examine. Nixon said "Silent Majority", Nixon won in a landslide, end of story. Reagan was a galloping anti-fluoridationist and dog whistle virtuoso, Reagan won in a landslide, end of story.

The right co-opted patriotism at a time when people were fearful about their country; to do so it had to deny what the country was up to, to obfuscate its history, and to exaggerate the power and intention of its enemies. It had to play on racial fears and religious manias which were clearly as wrong-headed as they are odious. And it had to convince itself not only that it was America, but that all America believed, unequivocally, what it believes.

I understand why they don't get the arts. What I can't figure out is why they suck so badly at politics.

I have no idea what WaPo columnists make (given that no newspaper makes much, if anything these days and that WaPo's parent company in particular makes most of its money from Kaplan Test Prep, and they're about to put the paper behind a paywall, probably not much), but I'd imagine that, like a member of Congress who's there just to make some connections for their future career as a lobbyist, Rubin's putting in time until she can quit and get a sinecure at a Koch-funded think tank as a reward.

What about Glenn Beck's The Overton Window, Orson Scott Card's Empire, and at least a couple of Tom Clancy's doorstops? I mean, none of them are what you'd call good books, but they sure as shit are written from a conservative POV and they point the fingers at lefties. Maybe once a conservative writer criticizes a liberal in fiction, he's placed on double secret wingnut probation and....and....uh....you know, I think Ace is just looking for more reasons to feel sorry for himself. Like there aren't enough already.

For conservatives, life must be one giant Rohrshach test. Is that statue in the park conservative or liberal? Does the song the robin sing in the spring glorify conservative values? Does the pattern of cracks in the sidewalk cement indicate that top marginal tax rates are excessive?

Me neither. I think in some ways the popularity and immense power of Rush Limbaugh and his epigones, and Murdoch's 24/7 over-the-counter version of Limbaugh's smack has mainstreamed the loonier, more racist fringe and appalled even some of the species of imbecile formally known as Reagan Democrats. The modern GOP nurtured these shits just like Nixon did but failed to learn the lesson of Pat Buchanan's 1992 keynote, even if they did successfully move their base and the nation rightward. But now they have no controlling legal authority over the evil spawn that was birthed. (With Jim DeMint at the helm, even the patina of respectability accorded the Heritage Foundation will be harder to defend, not that the Village media types will notice.)

But I can't say I agree that they've lost the illusion that only they are the real Americans, not when one half of Republicans think that the recent election was stolen by an organization that doesn't even exist anymore. They're like amateur gambling diehards at this point, and I think they will double and triple down on the craziness until, well, forever. Gaining the House in 2010 was like going all-in on a pair of nines and winning big: it planted the seed that they can ignore the saner odds of the game as long as they believe all they need to do is feed the crazy and stack their chip bank with Koch money.

For all the Village wailing and rending of garments, I think we're still in for a wild ride.

According to Simon, in Rubin's interview, "Human beings are not objective. We all see the world through a prism," and "An unbiased press is virtually impossible because there are no unbiased humans. We should all admit our biases and move on from there." And conservatives claim to like this? I thought 'moral relativism' was one of the scariest of their boogeymen.

When I look at this comment from one perspective it looks like a glorious sunrise, turn it upside-down and its a smiling plate of bacon and pancakes from Denny's. Or a flower, or a butterfly. Or maybe its the US flag...

Ace of spades is an arrogant f*ck. Seriously some conservative that gives him a boner writes a play and his expectation is that because his conservative pals wrote something is should automatically be seen as viable, respectable, work.

Yeah, their inability to understand that 1980-2008 was just a phase in the great cycle of American politics, driven by transient changes in demographics, economics, and social organization, and not the final triumph of How America Was Meant To Be For All Time drives pretty much all of their analysis.

They remind me of the post-1972 Democrats, who took 20 years to come to terms with the fact that no, the New Deal coalition isn't coming back together. They blamed bad Presidents (Carter), bad candidates (McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis), the supernatural political appeal of the Other Guy (Reagan), and even spun elaborate conspiracy theories (Christic Institute, October Surprise) before finally, grudgingly, throwing in the towel and backing a pro-death penalty Southern governor who declared that the era of Big Government was over - and even that was a close rung thing with occasional significant defections (Nader 2000).

The R's are still in the earliest stages of a 20-year process to adjust to the fact that it's not 1984 any more, just as the D's had to figure out that 1964 ain't coming back. There's a long, dark, ugly road ahead of them, and they haven't even started to travel it.

Ah, my favorite conservative whine - I thought You Liberals were supposed to be all tolerant and open-minded and stuff! The fact that you don't behave like the strawman punching-bags of our imagination proves that you're all big meanie hypocrites!

An unproduced play by the guy who wrote Woody Allen's worst film and some mystery novels a couple of decades ago isn't getting written up in the New Yorker? It can only be because the word has gone out from Thought Control Central to suppress this dangerous act of truth-telling. It's the only possible explanation.

It is, but only when it's being used by people they don't like. Bring up why they've historically supported horrible RW dictators all over the world, and they suddenly go all "well, other people have different democratic values".

Does the pattern of cracks in the sidewalk cement indicate that top marginal tax rates are excessive?

The Left's fictional heroes have long been using this power to their benefit: "Trashman also has a power called "Random Alert Factor", based on the fictional "science of numantics." One of the principles of numantics is that from observing "random" phenomena, "a general pattern may be deduced." Trashman is tuned into this mode of perception, giving him a synchronicity-based precognition/clairvoyance, of seemingly unrelated information by making observations of random (complex) phenomena. For example, on the inside back cover artwork of Subvert Comics #1, Trashman "hears" a crack in the sidewalk "speak" to him, warning him of an attack from behind. Strangely, Trashman's powers are diminished when he is exposed to an atmosphere lacking in a certain level of pollution."

(purely for the sake of argument let us imagine that) There was a paramilitary organisation in a large European country a few decades ago. One of the things they spent LARGE amounts of time doing was thinking along precisely these lines. One could see, for example, in a museum about this hypothetical organisation, such things as their own brand of "properly done" decorative porcelain figurines. Nothing overtly political about these figurines, mind you. Just made with a special dose of disdain for others.

Rubbin: "The play mixes these historic figures with fictional ones. I talked to Simon and Longin about their play (which, unsurprisingly, the mainstream media have ignored):"

Perhaps because the play hasn't been performed anywhere, nor has there been any attempt to stage it. If I had a dollar for every unstaged play the "mainstream media" has ignored, I'd throw a party for Roy's commenters and wouldn't charge admission.

Well, at least we can look forward to Simon and Longin's next play, about the falsification of WMD evidence in the build-up to the Iraq War and the NYT's involvement (among others) in colluding with it. You know, with them being so unbiased and all.

"For all the Village wailing and rending of garments, I think we're still in for a wild ride."

Oh, yes, indeed. For manifold reasons. I mostly worry about the real nutcases coming to the fore. While the Tea Partiers strutting around with guns was a predictable reaction to the election of a black President, there was still the implicit threat of violence--the really out-of-control kind--in their rhetoric. What they want are the circumstances which would legitimate that violence in the minds of most people, and economic distress--especially in the ranks of the poor--has always been a sure-fire way to get ordinary people really cranked up.

And, partly because of all this Patriot talk by them, I get the feeling that some violence leading to some good, old-fashioned fascism would be just fine by them.